Greece and the Ægean Islands

by Philip Sanford Marden

CHAPTER XI. IN ARCADIA

With the benison of the landlord, who promised to send our luncheon over to the station “in a little boy,” we departed from Nauplia on a train toward noontime, headed for the interior of the Peloponnesus by way of Arcadia. The journey that we had mapped out for ourselves was somewhat off the beaten path, and it is not improbable that it always will be so, at least for those travelers who insist on railway lines and hotels as conditions precedent to an inland voyage, and who prefer to avoid the primitive towns and the small comforts of peasants’ houses. Indeed our own feelings verged on the apprehensive at the time, although when it was all over we wondered not a little at the fact. Our plan was to leave the line of the railway, which now entirely encircles the Peloponnesus, at a point about midway in the eastern side, and to strike boldly across the middle of the Peloponnesus to the western coast at Olympia, visiting on the way the towns of Megalopolis and Andhritsæna, and the temple at Bassæ. This meant a long day’s ride in a carriage and two days of horseback riding over mountain trails; and as none of us, including the two ladies, was accustomed to equestrian exercises, the apprehensions that attended our departure from the Nauplia station were perhaps not unnatural.

It had been necessary to secure the services of a dragoman for the trip, as none of us spoke more than Greek enough to get eggs and such common necessaries of life, and we knew absolutely nothing of the country into the heart of which we were about to venture. The dragoman on such a trip takes entire charge of you. Your one duty is to provide the costs. He attends to everything else—wires ahead for carriages, secures horses, guides, and muleteers, provides all the food, hotel accommodation, tips, railway tickets, and even afternoon tea. This comprehensive service is to be secured at the stated sum of ten dollars a day per person, and in our case it included not only the above things, but beds and bedding and our own private and especial cook. To those accustomed to traveling in luxury, ten dollars a day does not seem a high traveling average. To those like ourselves accustomed to seeing the world on a daily expenditure of something like half that sum, it is likely to seem at first a trifle extravagant. However, let it be added with all becoming haste, it is the only way to see the interior of Greece with any comfort at all, and the comfort which it does enable is easily worth the cost that it entails.

From the moment we left Nauplia we were devoid of any care whatever. We placed ourselves unreservedly in the keeping of an accomplished young Athenian bearing the name of Spyros Apostolis, who came to us well recommended by those we had known in the city, and who contracted to furnish us with every reasonable comfort and transportation as hereinbefore set forth, and also to supply all the mythology, archæology, geography, history, and so forth that we should happen to require. For Spyros, as we learned to call him, was versed not only in various languages, including a very excellent brand of English, but boasted not a little technical archæological lore and a command of ancient history that came in very aptly in traversing famous ground. It came to pass in a very few days that we regarded Spyros in the light of an old friend, and appealed to him as the supreme arbiter of every conceivable question, from that of proper wearing apparel to the name of a distant peak.

It was in the comfortable knowledge that for the next few days we had absolutely no bargaining to do and that for the present Spyros, who was somewhere in the train, had first-class tickets for our transportation, that we settled back on the cushions and watched the receding landscape and the diminishing bulk of the Nauplia cliffs. The train religiously stopped at the station of Tiryns—think of a station provided for a deserted acropolis!—and then jogged comfortably along to Argos, where we were to change cars. It was here that we bought our shepherd pipes; and we were practicing assiduously on them with no result save that of convulsing the gathered populace on the platform, when an urchin of the village spied a puff of steam up the line and set all agog by the classic exclamation, “ἔρχεται,” equivalent to the New England lad’s "she’s comin'!"

The comfort of being handed into that train by Spyros and seeing our baggage set in after us without a qualm over the proper fee for the facchini can only be realized by those who have experienced it. And, by the way, the baggage was reduced to the minimum for the journey, consisting of a suit case apiece. Our party was composed of those who habitually “travel light,” even on the regular lines of traffic; but for the occasion we had curtailed even our usual amount of impedimenta by sending two of our grips around to the other end of our route by the northern rail. Nobody would care to essay this cross-country jaunt with needless luggage, where every extra tends to multiply the number of pack mules.

The train, which was fresh from Athens and bound for the southern port of Kalamata, soon turned aside from the Ægean coast and began a laborious ascent along the sides of deep valleys, the line making immense horseshoes as it picked its way along, with frequent rocky cuts but never a tunnel. I do not recall that we passed through a single tunnel in all Greece. The views from the windows, which were frequently superb as the train panted slowly and painfully up the long grades, nevertheless were of the traditional rocky character—all rugged hills devoid of greenery, barren valleys where no water was, often suggesting nothing so much as the rocky heights of Colorado. It tended to make the contrast the sharper when the train, attaining the heights at last, shot through a pass which led us out of the barren rocks and into the heart of the broad plain of Arcady. It was the real Arcadia of the poets and painters, utterly different from the gray country which we had been sojourning in and had come to regard as typical of all Greece. It was the Arcadia of our dreams—a broad, peaceful, fertile plain, green and smiling, peopled with pastoral folk, tillers of the fields, shepherds, and doubtless poets, pipers, and nymphs. There is grandeur and beauty in the rugged hills and narrow valleys of the north, but it would be wrong to assume that Greece is simply that and nothing more. At least a portion of Arcadia is exactly what the poets sing. The hills retreated suddenly to the remote distance and left the railway running along a level plain dotted with farms. Water ran rejoicing through. Trees waved on the banks of the brooks. Far off to the south the rugged bulk of Taÿgetos marked from afar the site of Sparta, the long ridge of the mountain still covered with a field of gleaming snow.

Arcadia boasts two of these large, oval plains, the one dominated by Tripolis and the other by Megalopolis. Into the first-mentioned the train trundled early in the afternoon and came to a halt amid a shouting crowd of carriage drivers clamoring for passengers to alight and make the drive down to Sparta. The road is said to be an excellent one, and that we had not planned to lengthen our journey to that point, and thence westward by the Langada Pass to the country which we later saw, has always been one of the regrets which mark our Hellenic memories. Sparta has made little appeal to the modern visitor through any surviving remains of her ancient greatness, and has fallen into exactly the state that Thucydides predicted for her. For he sagely remarked, in comparing the city with Athens, that future ages were certain to underestimate Sparta’s size and power because of the paucity of enduring monuments, whereas the buildings at Athens would be likely to inspire the beholder with the idea that she was greater than she really was. That is exactly true to-day, although the enterprising British school has lately undertaken the task of exploring the site of the ancient Lacedæmonian city and has already uncovered remains that are interesting archæologically, whatever may be true of their comparison with Athenian monuments for beauty. In any event, Sparta, with her stern discipline, rude ideals, and martial rather than intellectual virtues, can never hope to appeal to modern civilization as Athens has done, although her ultimate overwhelming of the Athenian state entitles her to historical interest. Sparta lies hard by the mountain Taÿgetos, and to this day they show you a ravine on the mountain-side where it is claimed the deformed and weakly Spartan children were cast, to remove them from among a race which prized bodily vigor above every other consideration. It is a pity that Sparta, which played so vast a part in early history, should have left so little to recall her material existence. If she was not elegant or cultured, she was strong; and her ultimate triumph went to prove that the land where wealth accumulates and men decay has a less sure grip on life than the ruder, sterner nations.

So it was that we passed Sparta by on the other side and journeyed on from the smiling plain of Tripolis to the equally smiling one of Megalopolis, entering thoroughly into the spirit of Arcadia and vainly seeking the while to bring from those shepherd pipes melody fit to voice the joy of the occasion. It was apparent now that we had crossed the main watershed of Hellas, for the train was on a downward grade and the brakes shrieked and squealed shrilly as we ground into a tiny junction where stood the little branch-line train for Megalopolis. And in the cool of the afternoon we found ourselves in that misnamed town, in the very heart of Arcadia, the late afternoon light falling obliquely from the westering sun as it sank behind an imposing row of serrated mountains, far away.

To one even remotely acquainted with Greek roots, the name Megalopolis must signify a large city. As a matter of fact, it once was so. It was erected deliberately with the intention of making a large city, founded by three neighboring states, as a make-weight against the increasing power of the Lacedæmonians; but, like most places built on mere fiat, it dwindled away, until to-day it is a village that might more appropriately be called Mikropolis—if, indeed, it is entitled to be called a “polis” of any sort. The railway station, as usual, lay far outside the village, and in the station yard the one carriage of the town was awaiting us. Into it we were thrust; Spyros mounted beside the driver, a swarthy native; and with a rattle that recalled the famous Deadwood coach we whirled out of the inclosure and off to the town. The village itself proved to be but a sorry hole, to put it in the mildest form. It was made up of a fringe of buildings around a vacant common, level as a floor and sparsely carpeted with grass and weeds. As we passed house after house without turning in, hope grew, along with thankfulness, that we had at least escaped spending the night in any hovel hitherto seen. Nevertheless we did eventually stop before a dingy abode, and were directed to alight and enter there. Under a dark stone archway and over a muddy floor of stone pavement we picked our gingerly way, emerging in a sort of inner court, which Spyros pointed out was a "direct survival of the hypæthral megaron of the ancient Mycenæan house"—a glorified ancestry indeed for a dirty area around which were grouped the apartments of the family pig, cow, and sundry other household appurtenances and attachés. It was an unpromising prelude for a night’s lodging, but it made surprise all the greater when we emerged, by means of a flight of rickety stairs, on a little balcony above, and beheld adjoining it the apartments destined for our use. They had been swept and garnished, and the floors had been scrubbed until they shone. The collapsible iron beds had been erected and the bedding spread upon them, while near by stood the dinner table already laid for the evening meal; and presiding over it all stood the cook, to whose energy all these preparations were due, smiling genially through a forest of mustache, and duly presented to us as “Stathi.”

In the twilight we whetted our appetites for dinner by a brisk walk out of the village, perhaps half a mile away, to the site of the few and meagre ruins that Megalopolis has to show. Our progress thither was attended with pomp and pageantry furnished by the rabble of small boys and girls whose presence was at first undesirable enough, but who later proved useful as directing us to the lane that led to the ruins and as guards in stoning off sundry sheep dogs that disputed the way with us. The usual disbursement of leptá ensued, and we were left to inspect the remains of ancient greatness in peace. Those remains were few and grass-grown. They included little more than a theatre, once one of the greatest in Greece, with the structures behind the orchestra still largely visible, and a few foundations of buildings behind these, on the bank of a winding river. Aside from these the old Megalopolis is no more.

That night we sat down to a dinner such as few hotels in Athens could have bettered. The candlesticks on the table were of polished silver, which bore the monogram of the ancestors of Spyros. Our tablecloth and napkins were embroidered. Our dishes were all of a pattern, and we afterwards discovered that every piece of our household equipment, from soup plates to the humblest “crockery” of the family supply, bore the same tasteful decoration. Many a time we have laughed at the incongruity between our surroundings and the culinary panorama that Stathi conjured up from his primitive kitchen outside and served with such elegance. It was a masterpiece of the chef’s art, six courses following each other in rapid succession, all produced in the narrow oven where a charcoal fire blazed in answer to the energetic fanning of a corn broom. Soup gave place to macaroni; macaroni to lamb chops and green peas; chickens followed, flanked by beans and new potatoes from the gardens of the neighborhood; German pancakes wound up the repast; and coffee was served in an adjoining coffee-house afterward—the whole accompanied by copious draughts of the water of Andros, which cheers without inebriating, and beakers of the red wine of Solon, which I suspect is capable of doing both. A very modern-looking oil lamp helped furnish heat as well as light, for we were high above the sea and the night was chilly. Even to this remote district the product of the Rockefeller industry has penetrated, and no sight is more common than the characteristic square oil cans, with a wooden bar across the centre for carrying, which the peasants use for water buckets when the original oil is exhausted. They are useful, of course—more so than the old-fashioned earthen amphorae. But they are not as picturesque.

My companion, whom it will be convenient to call the Professor, and I adjourned to the coffee-house below for our after-dinner smoke, and demanded coffee in our best modern Greek, only to evoke the hearty response, “Sure,” from our host. It seemed he had lived in New York, where he maintained an oyster bar; and, like all who have ever tasted the joys of Bowery life, he could not be happy anywhere else, but yearned to hear the latest news from that land of his heart’s desire. We tarried long over our cups, and had to force payment on him. Thence we retired through the low-browed arch that led to our abode, barred and locked it with ponderous fastenings that might have graced the Lion Gate itself, and lay down to repose on our collapsible beds, which happily did not collapse until Spyros and Stathi prepared them for the next day’s ride. This they did while we breakfasted. The morning meal came into the bedrooms bodily on a table propelled by our faithful servitors, the food having been prepared outside; and as we ate, the chamber work progressed merrily at our table side, so that in short order we were ready for the road. The carriage for the journey stood without the main gate, manned by a dangerous-looking but actually affable native, and behind it lay a spring cart of two wheels, wherein were disposed our beds, cooking utensils, and other impedimenta. The word of command was given, and the caravan set out blithely for the western mountains, bowed out of town by the beaming face of the man who had kept an oyster bar.

The road had an easy time of it for many a level mile. It ran through a fertile plain, watered by the sources of the famous Alpheios River, which we skirted for hours, the hills steadily converging upon us until at last they formed a narrow gorge through which the river forced its way, brawling over rocks, to the Elian plains beyond. Beside the way was an old and dismantled winepress, which we alighted long enough to visit. Disused as it was, it was easy to imagine the barefooted maidens of the neighborhood treading out the juices of the grapes in the upper loft, the liquid flowing down through the loose flooring into the vats beneath. It is the poetic way of preparing wine; but having seen one night of peasant life already, we were forced to admit that modern methods of extracting the juice seem rather to be preferred.

Just ahead lay the gateway of Arcadia, guarded by a conspicuous conical hill set in the midst of the narrowing plain between two mountain chains and bearing aloft a red-roofed town named Karytæna. Time was too brief and the sun too hot to permit us to ascend thereto, but even from the highway below it proved an immensely attractive place, recalling the famous hill towns of Italy. Behind it lay the broadening plain of Megalopolis and before the narrow ravine of the Alpheios, walled in by two mighty hills. Karytæna seems like an inland Gibraltar, and must in the old days have been an almost impregnable defense of the Arcadian country on its western side, set as it is in the very centre of a constricted pass. But for some reason, possibly because the enemies of Greece came chiefly from the east, it seems not to have figured prominently as a fortress in history. Below the town the road wound down to the river’s edge and crossed the stream on a quaint six-arched bridge, against one pier of which some thankful persons had erected a shrine of Our Lady. And beyond the road began a steady ascent. We had left the plain for good, it appeared. Before us lay the deep and tortuous defile through which the river flows to the western seas, the roar of its rushing waters growing fainter and fainter below as the panting horses clambered upward with their burdens, until at last only a confused murmuring of the river was heard mingling with the rustle of the wind through the leaves of the wayside trees. The road was not provided with parapets save in a few unusually dangerous corners, and the thought of a plunge down that steep incline to the river so far below was not at all pleasant. Fortunately on only one occasion did we meet another wagon, and on that one occasion our party incontinently dismounted and watched the careful passage of the two with mingled feelings. It was accomplished safely and easily enough, but we felt much more comfortable to be on the ground and see the wheels graze the edge of the unprotected outside rim of the highway.

AN OUTPOST OF ARCADY

Every now and then a cross ravine demanded an abrupt descent of the road from its airy height, and down we would go to the bottom of a narrow valley, the driver unconcernedly cracking his whip, the bells of our steeds jangling merrily, and our party hanging on and trying hard to enjoy the view in a nervous and apprehensive way, although increasingly mindful of the exposed right-hand edge of the shelf. It bothered Stathi, the cook, not at all. He was riding behind on the baggage cart which followed steadily after, and at the steepest of the descent he was swaying from side to side on the narrow seat, his cigarette hanging neglected from his lips—sound asleep.

These occasional ravines appeared to be due to centuries of water action, and their banks, which were well covered with woods, were marked here and there by tiny threads of cascades which sang pleasantly down the cliffs from above, crossed the road, and disappeared into the wooded depths of the river valley below. Bædeker had mentioned a huge plane tree and a gushing spring of water as a desirable place to lunch, but we looked for them in vain. Instead we took our midday meal beside a stone khan lying deserted by the roadside, in which on the open hearth Stathi kindled a fire and produced another of his culinary miracles, which we ate in the open air by the road, under a plane tree that was anything but gigantic. We have never quite forgiven Bædeker that “gushing spring.” When one has lived for a month or more on bottled waters, the expectation of drinking at nature’s fount is not lightly to be regarded.

THE GORGE OF THE ALPHEIOS

The remainder of the ride was a steady climb to Andhritsæna, varied by few descents, although this is hardly to be deemed a drawback. The knowledge that one has two thousand feet to climb before the goal is reached does not conduce to welcome of a sudden loss of all the height one has by an hour’s hard climb attained. The tedium of the hours of riding was easily broken by descending to walk, the better thus to enjoy the view which slowly opened out to the westward. We were in the midst of the mountains of the Peloponnesus now, and they billowed all around. It was a deserted country. Distant sheep bells and occasional pipes testified that there was life somewhere near, but the only person we met was a woman who came down from a hill to ask the driver to get a doctor for her sick son when he should reach Andhritsæna. At last, well toward evening, the drivers pointed to a narrow cut in the top of the hill which we were slowly ascending by long sweeping turns of road and announced the top of the pass. And the view that greeted us as we entered the defile was one not easy to forget. Through the narrow passage in the summit lay a new and different country, and in the midst of it, nestling against the mountain-side, lay Andhritsæna, red roofed and white walled, and punctuated here and there by pointed cypress trees. Below the town, the hills swept sharply away to the valleys beneath, filled with green trees, while above the rocks of the mountain-side rose steeply toward the evening sky. In the western distance we saw for the first time Erymanthus and his gigantic neighbors, the mountains that hem in the plain about Olympia, the taller ones snow-clad and capped with evening clouds. We straightened in our seats. Stathi came out of his doze. The whips cracked and we dashed into the town with the smartness of gait and poise that seem to be demanded by every arrival of coach and four from Greece to Seattle. And thus they deposited us in the main square of Andhritsæna, under a huge plane tree, whose branches swept over the entire village street, and whose trunk lost itself in the buildings at its side. The carriage labored away. The dragoman and his faithful attendant sought our lodging house to set it in order. And in the meantime we stretched our cramped limbs in a walk around the town, attended as usual by the entire idle population of youths and maidens, to see the village from end to end before the sun went down.

I should, perhaps, add the remark that in my spelling of “Andhritsæna” I have done conscious violence to the word as it stands on the map—the added “h” representing a possibly needless attempt to give the local pronunciation of the name. It is accented on the second syllable.

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CHAPTER XII. ANDHRITSÆNA AND
THE BASSÆ TEMPLE

We found the village of Andhritsæna fascinating in the extreme, from within as well as from without. It was obviously afflicted with a degree of poverty, and suffers, like most Peloponnesian towns, from a steady drain on its population by the emigration to America. Naturally it was squalid, as Megalopolis had been, but in a way that did not mar the natural beauty of its situation, and, if anything, increased its internal picturesqueness. This we had abundant opportunity to observe during our initial ramble through the place, starting from the gigantic plane tree which forms a sort of nucleus of the entire village, and which shelters with its spreading branches the chief centre of local activity,—the region immediately adjacent to the town pump. It was not exactly a pump, however. The term is merely conventional, and one must understand by it a stone fountain, fed by a spring, the water gushing out by means of two spouts, whither an almost continuous stream of townsfolk came with the inevitable tin oil-cans to obtain water for domestic uses.

The main, and practically the only, street of the town led westward from the plane, winding along through the village in an amiable and casual way. It was lined close on either side by the houses, which were generally two stories in height, and provided with latticed balconies above to make up for the necessary lack of piazzas below. Close to the great central tree these balconies seemed almost like the arboreal habitation made dear to the childish heart by the immortal Swiss Family Robinson; and in these elevated stations the families of Andhritsæna were disporting themselves after the burden and heat of the day, gossiping affably to and fro across the street, or in some cases reading.

ANDHRITSÆNA

We found it as impossible to disperse our body guard of boys and girls as had been the case the evening before at Megalopolis. Foreign visitors in Andhritsæna are few enough to be objects of universal but not unkindly curiosity to young and old; and the young, being unfettered by the insistent demands of coffee-drinking, promptly insisted on attending our pilgrimage en masse. It was cool, for the sun was low and the mountain air had begun to take on the chill of evening. We clambered up to a lofty knoll over the town and looked down over its slanting tiles to the wooded valley beneath, the evening smoke of the chimneys rising straight up in thin, curling wisps, while from the neighboring hills came the faint clatter of the herd bells and occasionally the soft note of some boy’s piping. Far away to the north we could see the snowy dome of Erymanthus, rising out of a tumbling mass of blue mountains, while between lay the opening and level plain of the Alpheios, widening from its narrows to form the broad meadows of Elis on the western coasts of the Peloponnesus. Here and there the house of some local magnate, more prosperous than the rest, boasted a small yard and garden, adorned with the sombre straightness of cypresses. Behind the town rose the rocky heights of the neighboring hills, long gorges running deep among them. Whichever way the eye turned, there was charm. The body guard of infantry retired to a respectful distance and stood watching us, finger bashfully to mouth in silent wonderment. Mothers with babies came out of near-by hovels to inspect us, and enjoyed us as much as we enjoyed the prospect that opened before.

From the aspect of the houses of the town we had adjudged it prudent to allow Spyros and Stathi a decent interval for the preparation of our abode before descending to the main street again and seeking out the house. Apparently the exact location of it was known by the entire population by this time, for, as we descended, willing natives pointed the way by gesticulations, indicating a narrow and not entirely prepossessing alley leading down from the central thoroughfare by some rather slimy steps, to a sort of second street, and thence to another alley, if anything less prepossessing than the first, where a formidable wooden gateway gave entrance to a court. Here the merry villagers bade adieu and retired to their coffee again. Once within, the prospect brightened. It was, of course, the fore-court of a peasant’s house, for hotels are entirely lacking in Andhritsæna. It was paved with stone flagging, and above the courtyard rose a substantial veranda on which stood the host—a bearded man, gorgeous in native dress, the voluminous skirt of which was immaculate in its yards and yards of fustanella. From tasseled fez to pomponed shoes he was a fine type of peasant, contrasting with his wife, who wore unnoticeable clothes of European kind. She was a pleasant-faced little body, and evidently neat, which was more than all. And she ushered us into the house to the rooms where Spyros and the cook were busily engaged in making up the beds, discreetly powdering the mattresses, and setting things generally to rights. The embroidered bed linen which had given us such delight by its contrast with the surroundings at Megalopolis at once caught the eye of the peasant woman, and she promptly borrowed a pillow-case to learn the stitch with which it was adorned. As for the rooms, they were scrubbed to a whiteness.

Just outside, overlooking the narrow by-way through which we had entered, was the inevitable balcony, whence the view off to the northern mountains was uninterrupted; and while supper was preparing we wrapped ourselves in sweaters and shawls and stood in mute admiration of the prospect—the deep valley below, the half-guessed plain beyond, and the rugged line of peaks silhouetted against the golden afterglow of the sunset. From this view our attention was distracted only by the sudden clamor of a church bell close at hand, which a priest was insistently ringing for vespers. The bell was hung, as so often happens, in a tree beside the church; and to prevent the unauthorized sounding of it by the neighborhood urchins the wise priest had caused the bell-rope to be shortened so that the end of it hung far up among the branches, and was only to be reached for the purposes of the church by a long iron poker, which the holy man had produced from somewhere within his sanctuary and which he was wielding vigorously to attract the attention of the devout. It may have been a sort of Greek angelus, designed to mark the hour of general sunset prayer; for nobody appeared in response to its summons, and after clanging away for what seemed to him a sufficient interval the priest unshipped the poker and retired with it to the inner recesses of the church, to be seen no more. The nipping and eager evening air likewise drove us to shelter, and the heat of the lamp and candles was welcome as lessening, though ever so slightly, the cold which the night had brought. It was further temporarily forgotten in the discussion of the smiling Stathi’s soups and chickens and flagons of Solon.

AN ARBOREAL CAMPANILE. ANDHRITSÆNA

The professor and I stumbled out in the darkness of the yard after the evening meal in search of a coffee-house, for the better enjoyment of our postprandial cigarettes, but we got no farther than the outer court before deciding to return for a lantern. Andhritsæna turned out to be not only chilly, but intensely dark o' nights. Its serpentine by-ways were devoid of a single ray of light, and even the main street, when we had found it, was relieved from utter gloom only by the lamps which glimmered few and faint in wayside shops that had not yet felt the force of the early-closing movement. The few wayfarers that we met as we groped our way along by the ineffectual fire of a square lantern, wherein a diminutive candle furnished the illuminant, likewise carried similar lights, and looked terrible enough hooded in their capotes. Diogenes-like, we sought an honest man,—and speedily discovered him in the proprietor of a tiny “kaffeneion,” who welcomed us to his tables and set before us cups of thick coffee, fervently disclaiming the while his intention to accept remuneration therefor. Indeed this generosity bade fair to be its own reward, for it apparently became known in a surprisingly short time that the foreign visitors were taking refreshment in that particular inn, with the result that patronage became brisk. The patrons, however, apparently cared less for their coffee than for the chance to study the newcomers in their midst at close range, and after we had basked for a sufficient time in the affable curiosity of the assembled multitude we stumbled off again through the night to our abode, the lantern casting gigantic and awful shadows on the wayside walls the while.

Now the chief reason for our visiting this quaint and out-of-the-way hamlet was its contiguity to the mountain on the flat top of which stands the ancient Bassæ temple. The correct designation, I believe, is really the “temple at Bassæ,” but to-day it stands isolated and alone, with no considerable habitation nearer than Andhritsæna, whatever was the case when it was erected. The evidence tended to show that Bassæ might be reached with about the same ease on foot as on horseback, or at least in about the same time; but as we were entirely without experience in riding, it was voted best that we begin our training by securing steeds for this minor side trip, in order to have some slight preparation for the twelve hours in the saddle promised us for the day following—a portentous promise that had cast a sort of indefinite shadow of apprehension over our inmost souls since leaving Nauplia. It was a wise choice, too, because it revealed to us among other things the difficulty of Greek mountain trails and the almost absolute sure-footedness of the mountain horse.

We were in the saddle promptly at nine, and in Indian file we set out through the village street, filled with the tremors natural to those who find themselves for the first time in their lives seated on horseback. But these tremors were as nothing to what beset us almost immediately on leaving the town and striking into the narrow ravine that led up into the hills behind it. It developed that while the prevailing tendency of the road was upward, this did not by any means preclude several incidental dips, remarkable alike for their appalling steepness and terrifying rockiness, for which their comparative brevity only partially atoned. The sensation of looking down from the back of even a small horse into a gully as steep as a sharp pitch roof, down which the trail is nothing but the path of a dried-up torrent filled with boulders, loose stones, smooth ledges, sand, and gravel, is anything but reassuring. It was with silent misgivings and occasional squeals of alarm that our party encountered the first of these descents. We had not yet learned to trust our mounts, and we did not know that the well-trained mountain horse is a good deal more likely to stumble on a level road than on one of those perilous downward pitches. From the lofty perches on top of the clumsy Greek saddles piled high with rugs, it seemed a terrifying distance to the ground; and the thought of a header into the rocky depth along the side of which the path skirted or down into which it plunged was not lightly to be shaken off. It was much better going up grade, although even here we found ourselves smitten with pity for the little beasts that scrambled with so much agility up cruel steeps of rock, bearing such appreciable burdens of well-nourished Americans on their backs. Spyros did his best to reassure us. He was riding ahead and throwing what were intended as comforting remarks over his shoulder to Mrs. Professor, who rode next in line. And as he was not aware of the exact make-up of the party’s mounts, he finally volunteered the opinion that horses were a good deal safer than mules for such a trip, because mules stumbled so. Whereupon Mrs. Professor, who was riding on a particularly wayward and mountainous mule, emitted a shriek of alarm and descended with amazing alacrity to the ground, vowing that walking to Bassæ was amply good enough for her. Nevertheless the mule, although he did stumble a little now and then, managed to stay with us all the way to Olympia, and no mishap occurred.

The saddles lend themselves to riding either astride or sidesaddle, and the ordinary man we met seemed to prefer the latter mode. The saddle frame is something the shape of a sawhorse, and after it is set on the back of the beast it is piled high with blankets, rugs, and the like, making a lofty but fairly comfortable seat. For the ladies the guides had devised little wooden swings suspended by rope to serve as stirrups for the repose of their soles. The arrangement was announced to be comfortable enough, although it was necessary for the riders to hold on fore and aft to the saddle with both hands, while a muleteer went ahead and led the beasts. In some of the steeper places the maintenance of a seat under these conditions required no little skill. As for the men, there were no special muleteers. We were supposed to know how to ride, and in a short time we had discovered how to guide the horses with the single rein provided, either by pulling it, or by pressing it across the horse’s neck. To stop the modern Greek horse you whistle. That is to say, you whistle if you can muster a whistle at all, which is sometimes difficult when a panic seizes you and your mouth becomes dry and intractable. In the main our progress was so moderate that no more skill was needed to ride or guide the steeds than would be required on a handcar. Only on rare occasions, when some of the beasts got off the track or fell behind, was any real acquaintance with Greek horsemanship required. This happened to all of us in turn before we got home again, and in each case the muleteers came to our aid in due season after we had completely lost all recollection of the proper procedure for stopping and were seeking to accomplish it by loud “whoas” instead of the soothing sibilant which is the modern Greek equivalent for that useful, and indeed necessary, word.

We found it highly desirable now and then to alight and walk, for to the unaccustomed rider the strain of sitting in a cramped position on a horse for hours at a time is wearying and benumbing to the lower limbs. On the ride up to Bassæ, those who did no walking at all found it decidedly difficult to walk when they arrived. The one deterrent was the labor involved in dismounting and the prospective difficulty of getting aboard again. In this operation the muleteers assisted our clumsiness not a little, and we discovered that the way to attract their attention to a desire to alight was to say “ka-tò,” in a commanding tone—the same being equivalent to “down.”

So much for our experiences as we wound along the sides of rocky ravines and gorges in the heart of the hills behind Andhritsæna. When we had grown accustomed to the manipulation of the horses and had learned that the beasts really would not fall down and dash us into the depths below, we began to enjoy the scenery. It was rugged, for the most part, although at the bottoms of the valleys there was frequently meadow land spangled with innumerable wildflowers and shrubbery, watered by an occasional brook. It was a lovely morning, still cool and yet cloudless. The birds twittered among the stunted trees. We passed from narrow vale to narrow vale, and at last, when no outlet was to be seen, we ceased to descend and began a steady climb out of the shady undergrowth along the side of a rocky mountain, where there was no wood at all save for scattered groves of pollard oaks—curious old trees, low and gnarled, covered with odd bunches, and bearing an occasional wreath of mistletoe. At the ends of their branches the trees put forth handfuls of small twigs, which we were told the inhabitants are accustomed to lop off for fagots. It is evident that the trees do not get half a chance to live and thrive. But they manage in some way to prolong their existence, and they give to the region at Bassæ and to the temple there a certain weird charm.

THRESHING FLOOR AT BASSÆ

Off to the west as we climbed there appeared a shining streak of silver which the guides saw and pointed to, shouting “Thalassa! Thalassa!” (the sea). And, indeed, it was the first glimpse of the ocean west of Greece. Shortly beyond we attained the summit and began a gentle descent along a sort of tableland through a sparse grove of the stunted oaks, among which here and there appeared round flat floors of stone used for threshing. Many of these could be seen on the adjacent hills and in the valleys, and the number visible at one time proved to be something like a score. All at once, as we wound slowly down through the avenue of oaks, the temple itself burst unexpectedly into view, gray like the surrounding rocks, from which, indeed, it was built. To approach a shrine like this from above is not common in Greece, and this sudden apparition of the temple, which is admirably preserved, seems to have struck every visitor who has described it as exceedingly beautiful, particularly as one sees it framed in a foreground of these odd trees. We were high enough above the structure to look down into it, for it is of course devoid of any roof; and unlike most of the other temples, it was always so, for it was of the “hypæthral” type, and intended to be open to the sky. Nor was this the only unusual feature of the temple at Bassæ. It was peculiar among the older shrines in that it ran north and south instead of east and west, which was the regular custom among the roofed structures of the Greeks. Of course this difference in orientation has given rise to a great deal of discussion and speculation among those whose opinions are of weight in such matters. Probably the casual visitor in Greece is well aware of the custom of so fixing the axes of temples as to bring the eastern door directly in line with the rising sun on certain appropriate days, for the better illumination of the interior on those festivals. Although such expedients as the use of translucent marble roofs were resorted to, the lighting of the interior of roofed temples was always a matter of some little difficulty, and this arrangement of the doorways was necessary to bring out the image of the god in sufficiently strong light. From this system of orientation it has occasionally been possible to identify certain temples as dedicated to particular deities, by noting the days on which the rising sun would have come exactly opposite the axis of the shrine. No such consideration would apply with the same force to a hypæthral temple, whatever else might have figured in the general determination of the orientation. But even at Bassæ, where the length of the temple so obviously runs north and south, it is still true that one opening in it was eastward, and it is supposed that in the end of the temple space was an older shrine to Apollo, which, like other temples, faced the rising sun. This older precinct was not interfered with in erecting the greater building, and it is still plainly to be seen where the original sacred precinct was.

The members of the single encircling row of columns are still intact, although in some cases slightly thrown out of alignment; and they still bear almost the entire entablature. The cella wall within is also practically intact, and inside it are still standing large sections of the unusual engaged half-columns which encircled the cella, standing against its sides. The great frieze in bas-relief, which once ran around the top, facing inward, is now in the British Museum, where it is justly regarded as one of the chief treasures of the Greek collection. It hardly needs the comment that such arrangement of the frieze was highly unusual, inside the building, instead of on the outer side of the cella, as was the case in the Parthenon. Ictinus, the architect of the Parthenon, also built the temple at Bassæ, which was dedicated by the Phigalians to “Apollo the Helper,” in gratification for relief from a plague. That fact has given rise to the conjecture that it was perhaps built at the same time that the plague ravaged Athens, during the early part of the Peloponnesian War. However that may be, it is evidently true that it belongs to the same golden age that gave us the Parthenon and the Propylæa at Athens. Unlike them, it does not glow with the varied hues of the weathered Pentelic marble, but is a soft gray, due to the native stone of which it was constructed. And this gray color, contrasting with the sombreness of the surrounding grove, gives much the same satisfactory effect as is to be seen at Ægina, where the temple is seen, like this, in a framework of trees.

Needless to say, the outlook from this lofty site—something like four thousand feet above the sea—is grand. The ocean is visible to the south as well as to the west. The rolling mountains to the east form an imposing pageant, culminating in the lofty Taÿgetos range. Looming like a black mound in the centre of the middle distance to the southward is the imposing and isolated acropolis of Ithome, the stronghold of the ancient Messenians. As usual, the builders of the temple at Bassæ selected a most advantageous site for their shrine. It was while we were enjoying the view after lunch that a solitary German appeared from the direction of Ithome, having passed through the modern Phigalia. He had a boy for a guide, but aside from that he was roaming through this deserted section of Greece alone. He knew nothing of the language. He had no dragoman to make the rough places smooth. He had spent several sorry nights in peasants’ huts, where vermin most did congregate. But he was enjoying it all with the enthusiasm of the true Philhellene, and on the whole was making his way about surprisingly well. We sat and chatted for a long time in the shade of the temple, comparing it with the lonely grandeur of the temple at Segesta, in Sicily. And as the sun was sinking we took the homeward way again, but content to walk this time rather than harrow our souls by riding down the excessively steep declivity that led from the mountain to the valleys below.

TEMPLE AT BASSÆ, FROM ABOVE

TEMPLE AT BASSÆ, FROM BELOW

At dinner that night in Andhritsæna an old man appeared with wares to sell—curiously wrought and barbaric blankets, saddlebags, and the like, apparently fresh and new, but really, he claimed, the dowry of his wife who had long been dead. He had no further use for the goods, but he did think he might find uses for the drachmæ they would bring. Needless to say, our saddlebags were the heavier the next day when our pack-mules were loaded for the journey over the hills to Olympia.

One other thing deserves a word of comment before we leave Andhritsæna, and that is the cemetery. We had seen many funeral processions at Athens, carrying the uncoffined dead through the streets, but we had never paid much attention to the burial places, because they are still mainly to be found outside the city gates, and not in the line commonly taken by visitors. At Andhritsæna we came upon one, however, and for the first time noticed the curious little wooden boxes placed at the heads of the graves, resembling more than anything else the bird-houses that humane people put on trees at home. Inside of the boxes we found oil stains and occasionally the remains of broken lamps, placed there, we were told, as a "mnemeion"—doubtless meaning a memorial, which word is a direct descendant. The lamps appear to be kept lighted for a time after the death of the person thus honored, but none were lighted when we saw the cemetery of Andhritsæna, and practically all had fallen into neglect, as if the dead had been so long away that grief at their departure had been forgotten. A little chapel stood hard by, and on its wall a metal plate and a heavy iron spike did duty for a bell.

Then the cold night settled down upon Andhritsæna, and we retired to the warmth of our narrow beds, ready for the summons which should call us forth to begin our fatiguing ride to the famous site of old Olympia.

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CHAPTER XIII. OVER THE HILLS
TO OLYMPIA

At five o'clock the persistent thumping of Spyros on the bedroom doors announced the call of incense-breathing morn, though Phœbus had not yet by any means driven his horses above the rim of the horizon. The air outside was thick o' fog,—doubtless a low-lying cloud settling on the mountain,—and it was dark and cheerless work getting out of our narrow beds and dressing in the cold twilight. Nevertheless it was necessary, for the ride to Olympia is long, and Spyros had promised us a fatiguing day, with twelve hours in the saddle as a minimum. To this forecast the pessimistic Baedeker lent much plausibility by his reference to the road as being unspeakably bad; and besides we ourselves had on the previous day gathered much personal experience of the mountain trails of the region. Breakfast under these circumstances was a rather hasty meal, consumed in comparative silence.

By the time the last of the rolls and jam had disappeared and the task of furling up the beds was well advanced, a clatter of hoofs in the village street drew one of the party to the door, whence word was speedily returned that the street outside was full of horses. And it was. There were ten steeds, including four for our party, two for Spyros and Stathi, one for a muleteer relief conveyance, and the rest for the baggage—the latter being small and seemingly quite inadequate burros or donkeys, who proved more notable for their patient indifference than for size or animation. While these were being laden, four other beasts drew near, bearing our solitary German of the day before and another of his countrymen who had materialized during the night, with their impedimenta. They were welcomed to the caravan, which, numbering fourteen beasts and almost as many humans, took the road out of town with commendable promptitude at sharp six o'clock. The cloud had lifted as we rounded the western edge of the valley and looked back at Andhritsæna, glimmering in the morning light. We were streaming off in Indian file along a very excellent road, like that on which we had ridden up from Megalopolis two days before, and which promised well for a speedy removal of the apprehensions awakened by Bædeker. But the road did not last long. Before we had fairly lost Andhritsæna in the hills behind, the leading guide turned sharply to the left, through a rocky defile in the hillside, and precipitated us down one of those rocky torrent beds, with the nature of which we had become only too familiar the day before. It was the less disturbing this time, however, because we had learned to trust implicitly to the careful feet of our horses, with no more than a firm grip on bridle and pommel and an occasional soft whistle, or murmured "ochs', ochs'," to the intelligent beasts as an outward and audible sign of inward and spiritual perturbation. It was steep but short, and we came out below upon the road again, to everybody’s unconcealed delight.

The road, however, soon lost itself in a meadow. When it is ultimately finished, the journey will be much easier than we found it. In a few years I suppose it will be perfectly possible to ride to Olympia in a carriage, and the horseback problem will cease to deter visitors to Bassæ from continuing their journey westward. The way now lay along a pleasant and rolling meadow country, dotted with primitive farms, which glowed under the bright morning sun. We splashed through a narrow upland river and up another rocky ascent, beyond which another downward pitch carried us to a still lower meadow. Meantime the cold of morning gave place to a growing warmth, and the wraps became saddle blankets in short order. We rode and walked alternately, choosing the level stretches through the grass for pedestrianism and riding only when we came to sharp upward climbs, thus easing the fatigue that we should otherwise have found in continued riding. Always we could see the imposing peaks to the north, and the downward tendency of the trail soon brought out the altitude of the hills behind Andhritsæna. The immediate vicinity of our path was pastoral and agricultural, in the main, for the recurring ridges over which we scrambled served only as boundaries between well-watered vales in which small trees and bushes flourished, and where the occasional sharp whir of pressure from a primitive penstock called attention to the presence of a water mill. Aside from these isolated mills there was little sign of habitation, for the fields seemed mostly grown up to grass. In the far distance we could see the valley of the Alpheios, broadening out of its confining walls of rock to what seemed like a sandy reach in the plain far below, and we were told that at nightfall we should be ferried across it close to Olympia, provided we caught the boatmen before they left for home. It was this anxiety to be on time that led Spyros to urge us along, lest when we came out at the bank of the river we should find no response to the ferryman’s call of "Varka! Varka!"—the common mode of hailing boatmen in Greece. With this for a spur we wasted little time on the way, but proceeded steadily, now riding, now walking, up hill and down dale, through groves of low acacias or Judas trees, or along grassy meadows where a profusion of wild flowers added a touch of color to the green.

The pleasant valley, however, proved not to be the road for very long. In an hour or so the guides branched off again into a range of hills that seemed as high as those we had left, and there entered a tortuous ravine worn by a mountain brook, along which the path wound higher and higher toward a distant house which the muleteers pointed out and pronounced to be a "ξενοδοχεῖον,"—the Professor had long ago learned to call it "Senator Sheehan,"—at which wayside inn the mistaken impression prevailed that we were speedily to lunch. It was not so to be, however. When we had achieved the height and rested under two leafy plane trees that we found there, Spyros repeated his tale about the ferrymen and their departure at sundown; and we must away at once, with no more refreshment than was to be drawn from some crackers and a bottle of Solon. And so we pressed on again, still climbing, though more gradually. The path was not so bad after all, despite the Bædeker, and in one place we voted it easily the finest spot we had found in all our Peloponnesian rambles. We were riding along at the time through a shady grove when we came suddenly upon a collection of mammoth planes, whose branches spread far and wide, and from the midst of the cleft side of one of them a spring bubbled forth joyously, flooding the road. It was here that the king on one of his journeys the year before had stopped to rest and partake of his noonday meal. It seemed to us, famished by six hours of hard riding, that the king’s example was one all good citizens should follow; but Spyros was inexorable, and reminded us that ferrymen might wait for the King of Greece, but not for any lesser personages whatsoever. We must not halt until we got to Gremka; for at Gremka we should find a good road, and beyond there it was four hours of travel, and we might judge exactly how much time we had for rest by the hour of our reaching the place. So we obediently proceeded, joined now by two more beasts so laden with the empty oil-cans common to the region that only their legs were visible. These furnished the comedy element in the day’s experiences, for the donkeys thus loaded proved to be contrary little creatures, always getting off the trail and careering down the mountain-side through the scrubby trees and bushes, their deck-loads of tin making a merry din as they crashed through the underbrush, while our guides roared with derisive laughter at the discomfiture of the harassed attendants. When not engaged in ridiculing the owners of those numerous and troublesome oil-cans, the muleteers sang antiphonally some music in a minor key which Spyros said was a wedding song wherein the bridegroom and the bride’s family interchange sentiments. This seems to be the regular diversion of muleteers, judging by the unanimity with which travelers in Greece relate the experience. Anon our muleteers would likewise find amusement by stealing around behind and administering an unexpected smack on the plump buttocks of the horses, with the inevitable result of starting the beast out of his meditative amble into something remotely resembling a canter, and eliciting an alarmed squeal from the rider—at which the muleteer, with the most innocent face in the world, would appear under the horse’s nose and grasp the bridle, assuring the frightened equestrian that the beast was "kalà"—or “all right.”

All the steeds were small with the exception of the altitudinous mule ridden by one of the ladies, and they were not at all bothered by the low branches of the trees through which we wended our way. Not so, however, the riders. The thorny branches that just cleared the nonchalant horse’s head swept over the saddle with uncompromising vigor, and the effort to swing the beast away from one tree meant encountering similar difficulties on the other side of the narrow path. Through this arboreal Scylla and Charybdis it was extremely difficult navigation and the horses took no interest in our plight at all, so that long before we emerged from the last of the groves along the way we were a beraveled and bescratched company.

Shortly after noon two villages appeared far ahead, and we were engaged in speculating as to which one was Gremka, when the guides suddenly turned again and shot straight up the hill toward a narrow defile in the mountain wall we had been skirting. It proved as narrow as a chimney and almost as steep, and for a few moments we scrambled sharply, our little horses struggling hard to get their burdens up the grade; but at last they gained the top, and we emerged from between two walls of towering rock into another and even fairer landscape. The plain of the Alpheios spread directly below, but we were not allowed to descend to it. Instead we actually began to climb, and for an hour or two more we rode along the side of the range of hills through the midst of which we had just penetrated. The path was pleasantly wooded, and the foliage was thick enough to afford a grateful shade above and a soft carpeting of dead leaves below. The air was heavy with the balsamic fragrance of the boughs, and the birds sang merrily although it was midday. Through the vistas that opened in this delightful grove we got recurring glimpses of the Erymanthus range, now separated from us only by the miles of open plain, and vastly impressive in their ruggedness.

The sides of the range of hills along which our path wound were corrugated again and again by ravines, worn by the brooks, and our progress was a continual rising and falling in consequence. The footing was slippery, due to the minute particles of reddish gravel and sand, so that here even our mountain horses slipped and stumbled, and we were warned to dismount and pick our own way down, which we did, shouting gayly “Varka! Varka!” at the crossing of every absurd little three-inch brook, to the intense enjoyment of the muleteers. And thus by two in the afternoon we arrived at Gremka, a poor little hamlet almost at the edge of the great plain, and were told that we had made splendid time, so that we might have almost an hour of rest, while Stathi unlimbered the sumpter mules and spread luncheon under two pleasant plane trees beside a real spring.

From Gremka on, we found the road again. It was almost absolutely level after we left the minor foothill on which Gremka sits, and for the remainder of our day we were to all intents and purposes in civilization again. Curiously enough, it was here that our little horses, that had been so admirably reliable in precipitous trails of loose rock and sand, began to stumble occasionally, as if careless now that the road was smooth and doubtless somewhat weary with the miles of climbing and descending. The guides and muleteers, refreshed with a little food and a vast amount of resinated wine, began to sing marriage music louder than ever, and the most imposing figure of all, a man who in every-day life was a butcher and who carried his huge cleaver thrust in his leathern belt, essayed to converse with us in modern Greek, but with indifferent success. The landscape, while no longer rugged, was pleasant and peaceful as the road wound about the valley through low hillocks and knolls crowned with little groves of pine, the broad lower reaches of the rivers testifying that we were nearing the sea. And at last, toward sunset, we swung in a long line down over the sands that skirt the rushing Alpheios and came to rest on the banks opposite Olympia, whose hotels we could easily see across the swelling flood.

The Alpheios is not to be despised as a river in April. It is not especially wide, but it has what a good many Greek rivers do not,—water, and plenty of it, running a swift course between the low banks of the south and the steeper bluffs that confine it on the Olympia side. The ferry was waiting. It proved to be a sizable boat, of the general shape of a coastwise schooner, but devoid of masts, and mainly hollow, save for a little deck fore and aft. Three voluble and, as it proved, rapacious natives manned it, the motive power being poles. With these ferrymen Spyros and Stathi almost immediately became involved in a furious controversy, aided by our cohort of muleteers. It did not surprise us greatly, and knowing that whatever happened we should be financially scathless, we sat down on the bank and skipped pebbles in the water. It developed that the boatman had demanded thrice his fee, and that Spyros, who had no illusions about departed spirits, objected strenuously to being gouged in this way and was protesting vehemently and volubly, while Stathi, whose exterior was ordinarily so calm, was positively terrible to behold as he danced about the gesticulating knot of men. It finally became so serious that the Professor and I, looking as fierce as we could, ranged ourselves alongside, mentioning a wholly mythical intimacy with the head of the Hellenic police department in the hope of promoting a wholesome spirit of compromise, but really more anxious to calm the excited cook, who was clamoring for the tools of his trade that he might dispatch these thrice-qualified knaves of boatmen then and there. Eventually, as tending to induce a cessation of hostilities, we cast off the mooring—whereat the dispute suddenly ended and the beasts of burden went aboard. So also did the Professor, who was anxious to establish a strategic base on the opposite bank; and the rest of us sat and watched the craft pushed painfully out into the stream and well up against the current, until a point was reached whence the force of the river took her and bore her madly down to her berth on the Olympia bank. Here fresh difficulties arose,—not financial but mechanical. The heavily loaded little donkeys proved utterly unable to step over the gunwale and get ashore. It was an inspiring sight to watch, the Professor tugging manfully at the bridle and the remainder of the crew boosting with might and main; but it was of no avail, although they wrought mightily, until at the psychological moment and in the spot most fitted to receive it, a muleteer gave the needed impetus by a prodigious kick, which lifted the patient ass over the side and out on the bank. The rest was easy. We were ferried over in our turn and disappeared from the view of the boatmen, each side expressing its opinion of the other in terms which we gathered from the tones employed were the diametrical reverse of complimentary. It was twelve hours to a dot from the time of our departure from Andhritsæna when we strolled into our hotel—at which fact Spyros plumed himself not a little.

HERÆUM. OLYMPIA

It had not been an unduly fatiguing day, after all. The frequent walking that we had done served to break up the tedium of long riding, which otherwise would have been productive of numb limbs and stiff joints. It is well to bear this in mind, for I have seen unaccustomed riders assisted from their saddles after too long jaunts utterly unable to stand, and of course much less to walk, until a long period of rest had restored the circulation in the idle members. Fortunately, too, we had been blessed with an incomparable day. Spyros confessed that he had secretly dreaded a rain, which would have made the path dangerous in spots where it was narrow and composed of clay. As it was, we arrived in Olympia in surprisingly good condition, and on schedule time, though by no means unready to welcome real beds again and the chance for unlimited warm water.

Olympia, like Delphi, is a place of memories chiefly. The visible remains are numerous, but so flat that some little technical knowledge is needed to restore them in mind. There is no village at the modern Olympia at all,—nothing but five or six little inns and a railway station,—so that Delphi really has the advantage of Olympia in this regard. As a site connected with ancient Greek history and Greek religion, the two places are as similar in nature as they are in general ruin. The field in which the ancient structures stand lies just across the tiny tributary river Cladeus, spanned by a footbridge.

Even from the opposite bank, the ruins present a most interesting picture, with its attractiveness greatly enhanced by the neighboring pines, which scatter themselves through the precinct itself and cover densely the little conical hill of Kronos close by, while the grasses of the plain grow luxuriantly among the fallen stones of the former temples and apartments of the athletes. The ruins are so numerous and so prostrate that the non-technical visitor is seriously embarrassed to describe them, as is the case with every site of the kind. All the ruins, practically, have been identified and explained, and naturally they all have to do with the housing or with the contests of the visiting athletes of ancient times, or with the worship of tutelary divinities. Almost the first extensive ruin that we found on passing the encircling precinct wall was the Prytaneum—a sort of ancient training table at which victorious contestants were maintained gratis—while beyond lay other equally extensive remnants of exercising places, such as the Palæstra for the wrestlers. But all these were dominated, evidently, by the two great temples, an ancient one of comparatively small size sacred to Hera, and a mammoth edifice dedicated to Zeus, which still gives evidence of its enormous extent, while the fallen column-drums reveal some idea of the other proportions. It was in its day the chief glory of the inclosure, and the statue of the god was even reckoned among the seven wonders of the world. Unfortunately this statue, like that of Athena at Athens, has been irretrievably lost. But there is enough of the great shrine standing in the midst of the ruins to inspire one with an idea of its greatness; and, in the museum above, the heroic figures from its two pediments have been restored and set up in such wise as to reproduce the external adornment of the temple with remarkable success. Gathered around this central building, the remainder of the ancient structures having to do with the peculiar uses of the spot present a bewildering array of broken stones and marbles. An obtrusive remnant of a Byzantine church is the one discordant feature. Aside from this the precinct recalls only the distant time when the regular games called all Greece to Olympia, while the “peace of God” prevailed throughout the kingdom. Just at the foot of Kronos a long terrace and flight of steps mark the position of a row of old treasuries, as at Delphi, while along the eastern side of the precinct are to be seen the remains of a portico once famous for its echoes, where sat the judges who distributed the prizes. There is also a most graceful arch remaining to mark the entrance to the ancient stadium, of which nothing else now remains. Of the later structures on the site, the “house of Nero” is the most interesting and extensive. The Olympic games were still celebrated, even after the Roman domination, and Nero himself entered the lists in his own reign. He caused a palace to be erected for him on that occasion—and of course he won a victory, for any other outcome would have been most impolite, not to say dangerous. Nero was more fortunately lodged than were the other ancient contestants, it appears, for there were no hostelries in old Olympia in which the visiting multitudes could be housed, and the athletes and spectators who came from all over the land were accustomed to bring their own tents and pitch them roundabout, many of them on the farther side of the Alpheios.

ENTRANCE TO THE STADIUM. OLYMPIA

The many treasuries, to which reference has been made as running along the terrace wall at the very foot of the hill of Kronos, are spoken of by Pausanias. Enough of them is occasionally to be found to enable one to judge how they appeared—somewhat, no doubt, like the so-called “treasury of the Athenians” that one may see in a restored form at Delphi. In these tiny buildings were kept the smaller votive gifts of the various states and the apparatus for the games. Not far from this row of foundations and close by the terrace wall that leads along the hill down to the arch that marks the stadium entrance, are several bases on which stood bronze statues of Zeus, set up by the use of moneys derived from fines for fracturing the rules of the games. Various ancient athletes achieved a doubtful celebrity by having to erect these “Zanes,” as they were called, one of them being a memorial of the arrant coward Sarapion of Alexandria, who was so frightened at the prospect of entering the pankration for which he had set down his name that he fled the day before the contest.

Within the precinct one may still see fragments of the pedestal which supported Phidias’s wonderful gold-and-ivory image of Zeus. The god himself is said to have been so enchanted with the sculptor’s work that he hurled a thunderbolt down, which struck near the statue; and the spot was marked with a vase of marble. Just how approval was spelled out of so equivocal a manifestation might seem rather difficult to see; but such at any rate was the fact. Of the other remaining bases, the most interesting is doubtless the tall triangular pedestal of the Niké of Pæonius, still to be seen in situ, though its graceful statue is in the museum.

Just above the meadows on the farther bank, there runs a range of hills, through which we had but recently ridden. And it was there that the ancients found a convenient crag from which to hurl the unfortunate women who dared venture to look on at the games. The law provided that no woman’s eye should see those contests, and so far as is known only one woman caught breaking this law ever escaped the penalty of it. She was the mother of so many victorious athletes that an unwonted immunity was extended to her. Other women, whose disguise was penetrated, were made stern examples to frighten future venturesome maids and matrons out of seeking to view what was forbidden.

The games at Olympia were celebrated during a period of about a thousand years, throughout which time they furnished the one recognized system of dates. They recurred at four-year intervals. Long before the appointed month of the games, which were always held in midsummer, duly accredited ambassadors were sent forth to all the cities and states of Hellas to announce the coming of the event and to proclaim the “peace of God,” which the law decreed should prevail during the days of the contest, and in which it was sacrilege not to join, whatever the exigency. On the appointed date the cities of all Greece sent the flower of their youth to Olympia, runners, wrestlers, discus throwers, chariot drivers, boxers, and the like, as well as their choicest horses, to contend for the coveted trophy. During the first thirteen Olympiads there was but one athletic event,—a running race. In later times the number was added to until the race had grown to a “pentathlon,” or contest of five kinds, and still later to include twenty-four different exercises. None but Greeks of pure blood could contest, at least until the Roman times, and nobles and plebeians vied in striving for the victor’s wreath, although the richer were at a decided advantage in the matter of the horse races. The prize offered, however, was of no intrinsic value at all, being nothing but a crown of wild olive, and it astonished and dismayed the invading Persians not a little to find that they were being led against a nation that would strive so earnestly and steadfastly for a prize that seemed so little. As a matter of fact it was not as slight a reward as it appeared to be, for in the incidental honors that it carried the world has seldom seen its equal. The man who proved his right to be crowned with this simple wreath was not only regarded as honored in himself, but honor was imputed to his family and to his city as well; and the city generally went wild with enthusiasm over him, some even going so far as to raze their walls in token that with so gallant sons they needed no bulwarks. Special privileges were conferred upon him at home and even abroad. In many cities the victor of an Olympic contest was entitled to maintenance at the public charge in the utmost honor, and the greatest poets of the day delighted to celebrate the victors in their stateliest odes. Thus, although games in honor of the gods were held at various other points in Greece, as for example at Delphi and at the isthmus of Corinth, none surpassed the Olympic as a national institution, sharing the highest honors with the oracle at Delphi as an object of universal reverence.

Of course the origin of these great games is shrouded in mystery, which has, as usual, crystallized into legend. And as the pediment in one end of the temple of the Olympian Zeus, preserved in the museum near by, deals with this story, it may be in order to speak of it. Tradition relates that King Œnomaus had a splendid stud of race horses of which he was justly proud, and likewise was possessed of a surpassingly beautiful daughter whom men called Hippodameia, who was naturally sought in marriage by eligible young men from all around. The condition precedent set by Œnomaus to giving her hand was, however, a difficult one. The suitor must race his horses against those of Œnomaus, driving the team himself; and if he lost he was put to death. One version relates that Œnomaus, if he found himself being distanced, was wont to spear the luckless swains from behind. At any rate nobody had succeeded in winning Hippodameia when young Pelops came along and entered the contest. He had no doubt heard of the king’s unsportsmanlike javelin tactics, for he adopted some subterfuges of his own,—doing something or other to the chariot of his opponent, such as loosening a linchpin or bribing his charioteer to weaken it in some other part,—with the result that when the race came off Œnomaus was thrown out and killed, and Pelops won the race and Hippodameia—and of course lived happily ever after.

The pedimental sculptures from the great temple reproduce the scene that preceded the race in figures of heroic size, with no less a personage than Zeus himself in the centre of the group, while Œnomaus and Pelops with their chariots and horses and their attendants range themselves on either side, and Hippodameia stands expectantly waiting. The restorations have been liberal, but on the whole successful; and besides giving a very good idea of the legend itself, they are highly interesting from a sculptural point of view as showing a distinctive style of carving in marble. The other pediment, preserved in about the same proportion, is less interesting from a legendary standpoint, but is full of animation and artistic interest. It represents the contest between the Centaurs and Lapiths, with Apollo just in the act of intervening to prevent the rape of the Lapith women. This episode had little appropriateness to the Olympic site, so far as I know, but the ease with which the Centaur lent himself to the limitations of pedimental sculpture might well explain the adoption of the incident here. The head of Apollo is of the interesting type with which one grows familiar in going through museums devoted to early work, the most notable thing being the curious treatment of hair and eyes.

The precinct about the great temple was once filled with votive statues, and Pliny relates that he counted something like three thousand. Of these it appears that few remain sufficiently whole to add much interest. But out of all the great assemblage of sculptures there is one at least surviving that must forever assuage any grief at the loss of the rest. That, of course, is the inimitable Hermes of Praxiteles, which everybody knows through reproductions and photographs, but which in the original is so incomparably beautiful that no reproduction can hope to give an adequate idea of it, either in the expression of body and features, its poise and grace, or in the exquisite sheen of marble. They have wisely set it off by itself in a room which cannot be seen from the great main hall of the museum, and the observer is left to contemplate it undistracted. It seems generally to be agreed that it is the masterpiece of extant Greek sculpture. It is nearly perfect in its preservation, the upraised arm and small portions of the legs being about all that is missing. The latter have been supplied, not unsuccessfully, to join the admirable feet to the rest. No effort has been made, and happily so, to supply the missing arm. The infant Dionysus perched on the left arm is no great addition to the statue, and one might well wish it were not there; but even this slight drawback cannot interfere with the admiration one feels for so perfect a work. Hermes alone fully justifies the journey to Olympia, and once seen he will never be forgotten. The satin smoothness of the marble admirably simulates human (or god-like) flesh, doubtless because of the processes which the Greeks knew of rubbing it down with a preparation of wax. No trace of other external treatment survives, save a faint indication of gilding on the sandals. If the hair and eyes were ever painted, the paint has entirely disappeared in the centuries that the statue lay buried in the sands that the restless Alpheios and Cladeus washed into the sacred inclosure. For the rivers frequently left their narrow beds in former times and invaded the precincts of the gods, despite the efforts of man to wall them out. They have done irreparable damage to the buildings there, but since they at the same time preserved Hermes almost intact for modern eyes to enjoy, perhaps their other vandalisms may be pardoned.

The museum also includes among its treasures a number of the metopes from the great temple of Zeus, representing the labors of Hercules. But probably next after the incomparable Hermes must be reckoned the Niké of Pæonius, standing on a high pedestal at one end of the great main hall, and seemingly sweeping triumphantly through space with her draperies flowing free—a wonderful lightness being suggested despite the weight of the material. This Niké has always seemed to me a fair rival of her more famous sister from Samothrace, suggesting the idea of victory even more forcibly than the statue on the staircase of the Louvre, which has an Amazonian quality suggestive of actual conflict rather than a past successful issue. The unfortunate circumstance about the Niké at Olympia is that her head is gone, and they have sought to suspend the recovered portion of it over the body by an iron rod. A wrist is in like manner appended to one of the arms, and the two give a jarring note, by recalling Ichabod Crane and Cap'n Cuttle in most incongruous surroundings. Nevertheless the Niké is wonderful, and would be more so if it were not for these lamentable attempts to restore what is not possible to be restored.

Of all the many little collections in Greece, that in Olympia is doubtless the best, and it is fittingly housed in a building in the classic style, given by a patriotic Greek, M. Syngros. Aside from the artistic remnants, there are a number of relics bearing on the athletic aspect of Olympia—its chief side, of course. And among these are some ancient discs of metal and stone, and a huge rock which bears an inscription relating that a certain strong man of ancient times was able to lift it over his head and to toss it a stated distance. It seems incredible—but there were giants in the land in those days.

The modern Olympic games, such as are held in Athens every now and then, are but feeble attempts to give a classic tone to a very ordinary athletic meet of international character. There is none of the significance attached to the modern events that attended the old, and the management leaves much to be desired. Former visitors are no longer maintained at the Prytaneum; but, on the contrary, are even denied passes to witness the struggles of their successors. The games fill Athens with a profitable throng and serve to advertise the country, but aside from this they have no excuse for being on Greek soil, and mar the land so far as concerns the enjoyment of true Philhellenes. Fortunately there is no possible chance of holding any such substitute games at Olympia herself. Her glory has departed forever, save as it survives in memory.

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CHAPTER XIV. THE ISLES OF
GREECE: DELOS

It was a gray morning—for Greece. The sky was overcast, the wind blew chill from the north, and anon the rain would set in and give us a few moments of downpour, only to cease again and permit a brief glimpse ahead across the Ægean, into which classic sea our little steamer was thrusting her blunt nose, rising and falling on the heavy swell. We had borne around Sunium in the early dawn, and our course was now in an easterly direction toward the once famous but now entirely deserted island of Delos, the centre of the Cyclades. Ahead, whenever the murk lifted, we could see several of the nearer and larger islands of the group,—that imposing row of submerged mountain peaks that reveal the continuation of the Attic peninsula under water as it streams away to the southeast from the promontory of Sunium. The seeming chaos of the Grecian archipelago is easily reducible to something like order by keeping this fact in mind. It is really composed of two parallel submerged mountain ranges, the prolongations of Attica and of Eubœa respectively, the summits of which pierce the surface of the water again and again, forming the islands which every schoolboy recalls as having names that end in “os.” Just before us, in a row looming through the drifting rain, we saw Kythnos, Seriphos, and Siphnos, while beyond them, and belonging to the other ridge, the chart revealed Andros, Tenos, Naxos, Mykonos, and Paros, as yet impossible of actual sight. This galaxy of islands must have proved highly useful to the ancient mariners, no doubt, since by reason of their numbers and proximity to each other and to the mainland, as well as by reason of their distinctive shapes and contours, it was possible always to keep some sort of landmark in sight, as was highly desirable in days when sailors knew nothing of compasses and steered only by the stars. Lovers of Browning will recall the embarrassment that overtook the Rhodian bark that set sail with Balaustion for Athens, only to lose all reckoning and bring up in Syracuse. No ancient ship was at all sure of accurate navigation without frequent landfalls, and even the hardy mariners of Athens were accustomed, when en route to Sicily, to hug the rugged shores of the Peloponnesus all the way around to the opening of the Corinthian Gulf, and thence to proceed to Corfu before venturing to strike off westward across the Adriatic to the “heel” of Italy, where one could skirt the shore again until Sicily hove in sight near the dreaded haunts of Scylla. Of course other considerations, such as food and water, added to the desirability of keeping the land in sight most of the time on so long a voyage; but not the least important of the reasons was the necessity of keeping on the right road.

We had set sail on a chartered ship, in a party numbering about forty, most of whom were bent on the serious consideration of things archæological, while the inconsiderable remainder were unblushingly in search of pleasure only slightly tinged by scientific enthusiasm. In no other way, indeed, could such a journey be made in anything like comfort. The Greek steamers, while numerous, are slow and small, and not to be recommended for cleanliness or convenience; while their stated routes include much that is of no especial interest to visitors, who are chiefly eager to view scenes made glorious by past celebrity, and are less concerned with the modern seaports devoted to a prosaic traffic in wine and fruits. To one fortunate enough to be able to number himself among those who go down to the sea in yachts, the Ægean furnishes a fruitful source of pleasure. To us, the only recourse was to the native lines of freight and passenger craft, or to join ourselves to a party of investigators who were taking an annual cruise among the famous ancient sites. We chose the latter, not merely because of the better opportunity to visit the islands we had long most wished to see, but because of the admirable opportunity to derive instruction as well as pleasure from the voyage. So behold us in our own ship, with our own supplies, our own sailing master and crew, sailing eastward over a gray sea, through the spring showers, toward the barren isle where Phœbus sprung.

Delos is easy enough to find now, small as it is. It long ago ceased to be the floating island that legend describes. If we can permit ourselves a little indulgence in paganism, we may believe that this rocky islet was a chip, broken from the bed of the ocean by Poseidon, which was floating about at random until Zeus anchored it to afford a bed for Leto, that she might be comfortably couched at the birth of Apollo, despite the promise of Earth that the guilty Leto should have no place to lay her head. Thus the vow which the jealousy of Hera had procured was brought to naught, and in Delos was born the most celebrated of the sons of Zeus, together with his twin sister, Artemis.

Delos is in fact a double island, divided by a narrow strait into Greater and Lesser Delos. And it was with the lesser portion that we had to do, as also did ancient history. For despite its insignificant size and remoteness, Delos the Less was once a chief seat of empire and a great and flourishing city, as well as the repository of vast wealth. Distant as it seems from Athens, the island is really quite central with reference to the rest of the archipelago, and from its low summit may be seen most of the Cyclades on a clear day. The narrow strait before referred to furnishes about all the harbor that is to be found at Delos to-day. Into this sheltered bit of water we steamed and dropped anchor, happy in the favoring wind that allowed us a landing where it is occasionally difficult to find water sufficiently smooth for the small boats; for here, as in all Greek waters, small boats furnish the only means of getting ashore. There was a shallow basin just before what was once the ancient city, and doubtless it was considered good harborage for the triremes and galleys of small draught; but for even a small steamer like ours it was quite insufficient in depth, and we came to rest perhaps a quarter of a mile from the landing, while the clouds broke and the afternoon sun came out warm and bright as we clambered down to the dories and pulled for the shore.

There proved to be little or no habitation save for the French excavators and their men, who were completing a notable work in uncovering not only the ancient precincts of Apollo and of the headquarters of the Delian league, but the residence portion of the ancient city as well, which we later discovered to lie off to the east on the high ground. We landed on a sort of rocky mole erected along the edge of what was once the sacred harbor and picked our way along a narrow-gauge track used by the excavators, to the maze of ruins that lay beyond. It proved as bewildering a mass of fallen marbles as that at Olympia. The main part of the ruin is apparently a relic of the religious side of the place, dominated, of course, by the cult of Apollo. Centuries of reverence had contributed to the enrichment of the environs of the shrine. All about the visitor finds traces of porticoes and propylæa, the largest of these being erected by Philip V. of Macedon, as is testified to by an extant inscription. Little remains standing of any of the buildings, but the bits of capital and entablature that lie strewn about serve to give a faint idea of the nature of the adornment that attended the temples in their prime. It is not difficult to trace the course of the sacred way leading from the entrance around the sacred precinct to the eastern façade of the main temples, lined throughout most of its course by the bases of statues, altars, and remnants of the foundations of small rectangular buildings which are supposed to have been treasuries, as at Delphi and Olympia. Not far away from the main temple of the god is still to be seen the base of his colossal statue, an inscription reciting that the Naxians made it, and that they carved statue and base from the same stone. Whether this means that the figure and base were actually a single block, or only that the figure and base were made of the same specific material, has caused some little speculation. As for the statue itself, there are at least two large fragments on the ground not far away, easily identified by the modeling as parts of the huge back and breast of the colossus. One of his feet is preserved in the British Museum, and a hand is at the neighboring island of Mykonos. The rest is either buried in the earth near by, or has been carried off by vandals. That the earth has many treasures still to yield up is evident by the occasional accidental discoveries recently made on the site by the diggers. When we were there the construction of a trench for the diminutive car-track had unearthed a beautifully sculptured lion deep in the soil; and since that time I have heard that several other similar finds have been made. So it may be that the lime burners have not made away with the great Apollo entirely.

There are three temples, presumably all devoted to the cult of Apollo, and one of them no doubt to the memory of his unfortunate mother, Leto, who bore him, according to tradition, on the shores of the sacred lake near by. Not far from the Apollo group are two other ruined shrines, supposed to have been sacred to Artemis. More interesting than either, however, to the layman is the famous “hall of the bulls,” which is the largest and best preserved of all the buildings, and which takes its name from the carved bullocks on its capitals. It is not saying much, however, to say that it is better preserved than the others. It is only so in the sense that its extent and general plan are easier to trace. Its altar, known as the “horned altar of Apollo,” from the rams’ heads with which it was adorned, was accounted by the ancients one of the seven wonders of the world. We were well content to leave the sacred precinct, and to wander along toward the north, past the Roman agora, in the general direction of the sacred lake. It proved to be a sorry pool, stagnant and unattractive compared with what it must have been when it was in its prime, with its banks adorned with curbing. Not far from its shores we were shown the remains of several ancient houses, also of the Roman period, in which the rooms were still divided by walls of a considerable height. These walls gave occasional evidence of having been adorned with stucco and frescoes, and the rooms revealed fragments of tessellated pavement, while under each house was a capacious cistern for the preservation of rain water. Of course these dwellings, while recalling Pompeii, were far less perfect in the way of artistic revelations, being so much older.

These houses, interesting as they were, did not compare with those which we were later shown on the hill above the precinct. These we passed on our way up to the theatre, and to those of us who were unskilled in archæological science they proved to be the most absorbing of all the ruins on the little island. There are a good many of them, lining several old streets, as at Pompeii. Their walls are of sufficient altitude to give even an idea of the upper stories, and in one case, at least, we were able to mount, by a sadly ruined stone staircase, to what was once the upper landing. The general arrangement of the rooms was quite similar to that made familiar by the excavated houses at Pompeii, the great central court, or atrium, being adorned with a most remarkable mosaic representing Dionysos riding on a dragon of ferocious mien. It is kept covered, but a guard obligingly raised the heavy wooden door that shields it from the weather, and propped it up with a stick so that it resembled nothing so much as a huge piano lid. The coloring of the mosaic was lively in spite of its sombreness, and the eyes of the figures were admirably executed.

All around the atrium were traces of a colonnade, pieces of the columns remaining intact. The walls were apparently decorated with bits of stone set deep in a coating of mortar, and once adorned with a colored wash of red, yellow, and blue. Mural paintings naturally were wanting, for these houses were not only older than those of the Neapolitan suburb, but they perished by a slow weathering process instead of by a sudden overwhelming such as overtook Pompeii. What traces of painting there are left on the Delian walls are indistinct and rather unsatisfactory, and recall the childish scrawls of our own day. But the houses themselves, with their occasional pavements and the one admirable mosaic, leave little to be desired. Particularly interesting was the revelation of the drainage system. The houses were not only carefully provided with deep cisterns for preserving rain water; they had also well-designed channels for carrying waste water away. Every house in these streets had its drain covered with flat stones running out to the main sewer of the street, while those in turn converged in a trunk sewer at the foot of the slope. It is evident enough that Delos was a dry sort of place, both by nature and by artifice, and that in the period of the city’s greatest celebrity it would be impossible for the historian to refer to the muddy condition existing at that period of the month just before the streets underwent their regular cleaning.

We had passed well up toward the theatre on the slopes of the height called Kythnos before we cleared the ancient dwellings. The theatre itself proved to be roomy, but largely grass-grown and exceedingly steep to clamber over. The portion devoted to seats was chiefly notable for occupying considerably more than the traditional semicircle, and for having its ends built up with huge walls of masonry. Only the lower seats are preserved. The colonnaded proskenion, which may have supported a stage, is, however, highly unusual and interesting.

Sundry venturesome spirits climbed to the summit of Kythnos, but it was no day for the view for which that eminence is celebrated. On a clearer day a great many of the Cyclades could be seen, no doubt, because of the central location of the island and the marvelous clarity of the Greek atmosphere, when it is clear at all. We were unfortunate enough to meet with a showery April day, which promised little in the way of distant prospects. Halfway down the side of Kythnos, however, was easily to be seen the grotto of Apollo. In fact, it is the most constantly visible feature of the island. It is a sort of artificial cave in the side of the hill toward the ruins, and here was the earliest of the temples to the god. Ancient hands added to what natural grotto there was by erecting a primitive portal for it. Two huge slabs of stone seem to have been allowed to drop toward one another until they met, forming a mutual support, so that the effect is that of a gable. Other slabs have been arranged to form a pitch roof over the spot, and a marble lintel and gate posts have also been added,—presumably much later than the rest. It is even probable that this venerable shrine was also the seat of an oracle, for certain of the internal arrangements of the grotto bear a resemblance to those known to have existed at Delphi; but if there was one in Delos, it never attained to the reputation that attended the later chief home of the far-darting god.

DELOS, SHOWING GROTTO

GROTTO OF APOLLO. DELOS

The births of Apollo and Artemis appear to have been deemed quite enough for the celebrity of Delos; for in after years, when the Athenians felt called upon to “purify” the city, they enacted that no mortal in the future should be permitted to be born or to die on the island. In consequence, temporary habitations were erected across the narrow strait on the shores of Greater Delos for the use of those in extremis or those about to be confined. Aside from this fact, the larger island has little or no interest to the visitor.

There is, of course, a museum at Delos. Some day it will be a very interesting one indeed. At the time of our visit it was only just finished, and had not been provided with any floor but such as nature gave. In due season it will probably rank with any for its archæological value, although it will be infinitely less interesting than others to inexpert visitors, who generally prefer statues of fair preservation to small fragments and bits of inscription. Of the notable sculptures that must have abounded in Delos once, comparatively little remains; certainly nothing to compare with the charioteer and the Lysippus at Delphi, or with the Hermes and pedimental figures at Olympia. The great charm of Delos to the unskilled mind is to be found in its history and in its beautiful surroundings. As a birthplace of one of the major gods of high Olympus, the seat of the Delian league against the Persians, and the original treasury of the Athenian empire, Delos has history enough to satisfy an island many times her size. Traces still remain of the dancing place where the Delian maidens performed their wonderful evolutions during the annual pilgrimage, which was a feature during the Athenian supremacy; and the temples and treasuries, ruined as they are, forcibly recall the importance which once attached to the spot. The memory still survives of the so-called “Delian problem” of the doubling of the cube, a task that proved a poser for the ancient mathematicians when the oracle propounded, as the price of staying a plague, that the Delians should double the pedestal of Parian marble that stood in the great temple. But it is almost entirely a place of memories, deserted by all but the excavators and an occasional shepherd. To-day it is little more than the bare rock that it was when Poseidon split it from the bed of the sea. Apollo gave it an immortality, however, which does not wane although Apollo himself is dead. Athens and Corinth gave it a worldly celebrity, which proved but temporary so far as it depended on activity in the world of affairs. Delos, washed by the Ægean, has little to look forward to but to drowse the long tides idle, well content with her crowded hour of glorious life, and satisfied that her neighbors should have the age without a name.

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CHAPTER XV. SAMOS AND THE
TEMPLE AT BRANCHIDÆ

The stiff north wind, which was known to be blowing outside, counseled delaying departure from Delos until after the evening meal, for our course to Samos lay through the trough of the sea. In the shelter of the narrow channel between Greater and Lesser Delos the water was calm enough to enable eating in comfort, and it was the commendable rule of the cruise to seek shelter for meals, owing to the lack of “racks” to prevent the contents of the tables from shifting when the vessel rolled. Hence it was well along in the evening before the anchor was weighed; and as the engines gave their first premonitory wheezes, word was passed from the bridge that all who did not love rough weather would better retire at once, as we were certain to “catch it” as soon as we rounded the capes of the neighboring Mykonos and squared away for Samos across a long stretch of open water. The warning served to bring home to us one of the marked peculiarities about cruising in the Ægean, namely, the succession of calm waters and tempestuous seas, which interlard themselves like the streaks of fat and lean in the bacon from the Irishman’s pig, which was fed to repletion one day and starved the next. This, of course, is due to the numerous islands, never many miles apart, which are forever affording shelter from the breezes and waves, only to open up again and subject the craft to a rolling and boisterous sea as it crosses the stretches of open channel between them. When the experiences due to these sudden transitions were not trying, they were likely to be amusing, we discovered, as was the case on one morning when the tables had been laid for breakfast rather imprudently just before rounding a windy promontory. The instant the ship felt the cross seas she began to roll heavily, and the entire array of breakfast dishes promptly left the unprotected table, only to crash heavily against the stateroom doors that lined the saloon, eliciting shrieks from those within; while the following roll of the vessel sent the débris careering across the floor to bring up with equal resonance against the doors on the other side, the stewards meantime being harassed beyond measure to recover their scudding cups and saucers.

In the morning of our arrival off Samos we found ourselves moving along on an even keel, under the lee of that extensive island and close also to the shores of Asia Minor, the famous promontory of Mykale looming large and blue ahead. We coasted along the Samian shore, close enough to distinguish even from a distance the ruins of the once famous Heræum, which was among the objects of our visit. It was marked from afar by a single gleaming column, rising apparently from the beach. For the present we passed it by, the ship heading for the little white town farther ahead and just opposite the bay made by the great bulk of Mykale. It was historic ground, for it was at Mykale that the pursuing Greeks, under Leotychides and Xantippus, made the final quietus of the Persian army and navy in the year 479 B.C., just after Salamis, by the final defeat of Tigranes. Mykale, however, we viewed only from afar. The ship rounded the mole protecting the harbor of what was once the chief city of Samos, and came to anchor for the first time in Turkish waters. While the necessary official visits and examination of passports were being made, there was abundant opportunity to inspect the port from the deck. It lay at the base of a rugged mountain, and the buildings of the city lined the diminutive harbor on two sides, curving along a low quay. In general appearance the town recalled Canea, in Crete, by the whiteness of its houses and the pale greenness of its shutters and the occasional slender tower of a mosque. Technically Samos is a Turkish island. Practically it is so only in the sense that it pays an annual tribute to the Sultan and that its Greek governor is nominated by that monarch. It was sufficiently Turkish, in any event, to require passports and the official call of a tiny skiff flying the crescent flag and bearing a resplendent local officer crowned with a red fez. The formalities were all arranged by proxy ashore, and in due time the ship’s boat returned, bearing the freedom of the city and a limited supply of Samian cigarettes, which retailed at the modest sum of a franc and a half the hundred.

Herodotus devotes a considerable space to the history of the Samians in the time of the Persian supremacy and especially to the deeds of the tyrant Polycrates, who seized the power of the island and proved a prosperous ruler. In fact the rampant successes of Polycrates alarmed his friend and ally, King Amasis of Egypt, who had the wholesome dread of the ancients for the “jealousy” of the gods; and in consequence Amasis sent a messenger up to Samos to tell Polycrates that he was too successful for his own good. Amasis was afraid, according to the messenger, that some evil would overtake the Samian ruler, and he advised Polycrates to cast away whatever thing he valued the most as a propitiation of the gods. The advice so impressed Polycrates that he recounted his possessions, selected a certain emerald seal-ring that he cherished exceedingly, took it aboard a fifty-oared galley and, when sufficiently far out at sea, hurled the treasured ring into the water. Whereat he returned content that he had appeased the presumably jealous gods. In less than a week a fisherman, who had taken an unusually beautiful fish in those waters, presented it as a great honor to Polycrates, and in dressing it for the table the servants found in its belly the ring that Polycrates had tried so hard to cast away! The event was held to be superhuman, and an account of it was promptly sent to Amasis in Egypt. He, however, judging from it that Polycrates was inevitably doomed by heaven, ended his alliance with Samos on the naïve plea that he should be sorry to have anything happen to a friend, and therefore proposed to make of Polycrates an enemy, that he need not grieve when misfortune overtook him! Misfortune did indeed overtake Polycrates, and Herodotus describes at some length how it occurred, ending his discourse with the remark that he feels justified in dealing at such length with the affairs of the Samians because they have accomplished "three works, the greatest that have been achieved by all the Greeks. The first is of a mountain, one hundred and fifty orgyiæ in height, in which is dug a tunnel beginning at the base and having an opening at either side of the mountain. The length of the tunnel is seven stadia, and the height and breadth are eight feet respectively. Through the whole length of the tunnel runs another excavation three feet wide and twenty cubits deep, through which cutting the water, conveyed by pipes, reaches the city, being drawn from a copious fount on the farther side of the mountain. The architect of this excavation was a Megarian, Eupalinus the son of Naustrophus. This, then, is one of the three great works. The second is a mound in the sea around the harbor, in depth about a hundred orgyiæ and in length about two stadia. The third work of theirs is a great temple, the largest we ever have seen, of which the architect was Rhœcus, son of Phileos, a native Samian. On account of these things I have dwelt longer on the affairs of the Samians."[^[3]]

It was, then, inside this mole, two stadia in length, that we were anchored. Doubtless the modern mole is still standing on the ancient foundation, but it would not be considered anything remarkable in the way of engineering to-day, whatever it may have been deemed in the childhood of the race. Something in the air of Samos must have bred a race of natural engineers, no doubt, for not only were these artificial wonders constructed there, but Pythagoras, the mathematical philosopher, was born in the island.

From the city up to the remnants of the ancient aqueduct in the mountain is not a difficult climb, and the tunnel itself affords a great many points of interest. In an age when tunneling was not a common or well-understood art, it must indeed have seemed a great wonder that the Samians were able to pierce the bowels of this considerable rocky height to get a water supply that could not be cut off. The source of the flowage was a spring located in the valley on the side of the mountain away from the town, and it would have been perfectly possible to convey the water to the city without any tunnel at all, merely by following the valley around. For some reason this was deemed inexpedient—doubtless because of the evident chance an enemy would have for cutting off the supply. The obvious question is, what was gained by making the tunnel, since the spring itself was in the open and could have been stopped as readily as an open aqueduct? And the only answer that has been suggested is that the spring alone is so concealed and so difficult to find that, even with the clue given by Herodotus, it was next to impossible to locate it. And in order to conceal the source still further, the burial of the conduit in the heart of the mountain certainly contributed not a little. Nevertheless it is a fact that the farther end of the tunnel was discovered some years ago by tracing a line from the site of this spring, so that now the aqueduct has been relocated and is found to be substantially as described by Herodotus in the passage quoted.

Most visitors, possessed of comparatively limited time like ourselves, are content with inspecting only the town end of the tunnel, which lies up in the side of the mountain. It is amply large enough to enter, but tapers are needed to give light to the feet as one walks carefully, and often sidewise, along the ledge that borders the deeper cutting below, in which once ran the actual water pipes. The depth of the latter, which Herodotus calls “twenty cubits,” is considerably greater at this end of the tunnel than at the other,—a fact which is apparently accounted for by the necessity of correcting errors of level, after the tunnel was finished, to give sufficient pitch to carry the water down. In those primitive days it is not surprising that such an error was made. There is evidence that the tunnel was dug by two parties working from opposite ends, as is the custom to-day. That they met in the centre of the mountain with such general accuracy speaks well for the engineering skill of the time, and that they allowed too little for the drop of the stream is not at all strange. The result of this is that, in the end commonly visited by travelers, there is need of caution lest the unwary slip from the narrow ledge at the side into the supplementary cut thirty feet below—a fall not to be despised, either because of its chance of injury or because of the difficulty of getting the victim out again. So much, as Herodotus would say, for the water-conduit of the Samians.

From the tunnel down to the ancient Heræum, whither our ship had sailed to await us, proved to be a walk of something over two miles along a curving beach, across which occasional streams made their shallow way from inland to the sea. It was a pleasant walk, despite occasional stony stretches; for the rugged mountain chain inland presented constantly changing views on the one hand, while on the other, across the deep blue of the Ægean, rose the commanding heights of Asia Minor, stretching away from the neighboring Mykale to the distant, and still snow-crowned, peaks of the Latmian range. Under the morning sun the prospect was indescribably lovely, particularly across the sea to the bold coasts of Asia, the remote mountains being revealed in that delicate chiaroscuro which so often attends white peaks against the blue. Ahead was always the solitary column which is all that remains standing of the once vast temple of Hera, “the largest we ever have seen,” according to the ingenuous and truthful Herodotus.

There is a reason for holding the spot in an especial manner sacred to Hera, for it is said by legend that she was born on the banks of one of the little streams whose waters we splashed through in crossing the beach to her shrine. The temple itself we found to lie far back from the water’s edge, its foundations so buried in the deposited earth that considerable excavation has been necessary to reveal them. The one remaining column is not complete, but is still fairly lofty. It bears no capital, and its drums are slightly jostled out of place, so that it has a rather unfinished look, to which its lack of fluting contributes; for, as even the amateur knows, the fluting of Greek columns was never put on until the whole pillar was set up, and every joint of it ground so fine as to be invisible. We walked up to the ruin through the inevitable cutting, in which lay the inevitable narrow-gauge track for the excavator’s cars, but there was no activity to be seen. The excavation had progressed so far as to leave little more to be done, or there was no more money, or something had intervened to put an end to the operations for the time. Not far away, however, along the beach, lay a few houses, which constituted the habitation of the diggers and of a few fishermen, whose seine boats were being warped up as we passed.

The exploration of the great temple of Hera has revealed the not unusual fact that there had been two temples on the same spot at successive periods. They were not identical in location, but the later overlapped the earlier, traces of the latter being confined to its lowest foundation stones. Of the ruins of the later temple there was but slightly more visible, save for the one standing column and a multitude of drums, capitals, and bases lying about. The latter were of a type we had not previously seen. They were huge lozenges of marble ornamented with horizontal grooves and resembling nothing so much as great cable drums partially wound—the effect of a multitude of narrow grooves in a slightly concave trough around the column. They were of a noticeable whiteness, for the marble of which this temple was composed was not so rich in mineral substances as the Pentelic, and gave none of that golden brown effect so familiar in the Athenian temples.

COLUMN BASES. SAMOS

CARVED COLUMN-BASE. BRANCHIDÆ

It was in this great Heræum, which in size rivaled the great temples at Ephesus and at Branchidæ, that the Samians deposited the brazen bowl filched from the Spartans, of which the ancients made so much. It appears that because of Crœsus having sought an alliance with Lacedæmonia, the inhabitants of that land desired to return the compliment by sending him a present. They caused a huge brass bowl to be made, adorned with many figures and capable of holding three hundred amphoræ. This they dispatched to Sardis. But as the ship bearing it was passing Samos on her way, the Samians came out in force, seized the ship, and carried the great bowl off to the temple, where it was consecrated to the uses of the goddess. That the Samians stole it thus was of course indignantly denied,—the islanders retorting that the bowl was sold them by the Spartans when they discovered that Crœsus had fallen before Cyrus and was no longer an ally to be desired. No trace of any such relic of course is to be seen there now. In fact there is very little to recall the former greatness of the place but the silent and lonely column and a very diminutive museum standing near the beach, which contains disappointingly little. It is, as a matter of fact, no more than a dark shed, similar in appearance to the rest of the houses of the hamlet.

The steamer was waiting near by in the sheltered waters of the sound, and as we were desirous of visiting the temple at Branchidæ that same afternoon, we left Samos and continued our voyage. Under that wonderfully clear sky the beauty of both shores was indescribable. The Asian coast, toward which we now bore our way, was, however, the grander of the two, with its foreground of plains and meadows and its magnificent background of imposing mountains stretching far into the interior and losing themselves in the unimagined distances beyond. The sun-kissed ripples of the sea were of that incredible blue that one never ceases to marvel at in the Mediterranean, and it was the sudden change from this color to a well-defined area of muddy yellow in the waters through which we glided that called attention to the mouth of the Mæander on the shore. That proverbially crooked and winding stream discharges so large a bulk of soil in projecting itself into the sea that the surface is discolored for a considerable distance off shore; and through this our steamer took her way, always nearing the low-lying beach, until we descried a projecting headland, and rounded it into waters as calm as those of a pond. Here we dropped anchor and once again proceeded to the land, setting our feet for the first time on the shores of Asia.

Samos was, of course, still to be seen to the northwest, like a dark blue cloud rising from a tossing sea. Before us, glowing in the afternoon sun, stretched a long expanse of open seashore meadow, undulating here and there, almost devoid of trees, but thickly covered with tracts of shrubs and bushes, through which we pushed our way until we came upon an isolated farmhouse and a path leading off over the moor. It was a mere cart-track through the green of the fields, leading toward a distant hillock, on which we could from afar make out the slowly waving arms of windmills and indications of a small town. None of the many rambles we took in the Greek islands surpassed this two-mile walk for pure pleasure. The air was balmy yet cool. The fields were spangled with flowers,—wild orchids, iris, gladioli, and many others. There were no gray hills, save so far in the distance that they had become purple and had lost their bareness. All around was a deserted yet pleasant and pastoral country—deserving, none the less, the general name of moor.

What few people we met on the way were farmers and shepherds, leading pastoral lives in the little brush wigwams so common in Greek uplands in the summer months. They gave us the usual cheerful good-day, and looked after our invading host with wondering eyes as we streamed off over the rolling country in the general direction of Branchidæ.

That ancient site appeared at last on a hillock overlooking the ocean. A small and mean hamlet had largely swallowed up the immediate environs of the famous temple that once stood there, contrasting strangely with the remaining columns that soon came into view over the roofs, as we drew near, attended by an increasing army of the youth. The name of the little modern village on the spot we never knew. Anciently this was the site of the temple of Apollo Didymeus, erected by the Branchidæ,—a clan of the neighborhood of ancient Miletus who claimed descent from Branchus. The temple of Apollo which had formerly stood upon the site was destroyed in some way in the sixth century before Christ, and the Branchidæ set out to erect a shrine that they boasted should rival the temple of Diana at Ephesus in size and in ornamentation. Nor was this an inappropriate desire, since Apollo and Diana—or Artemis, as we ought to call her—were twins, whence indeed the name “Didymeus” was applied to the temple on the spot. Unfortunately the great temple which the Branchidæ designed was never completed, simply because of the vastness of the plan. Before the work was done, Apollo had ceased to be so general an object of veneration, and what had been planned to be his most notable shrine fell into gradual ruin and decay.

It has not been sufficient, however, to destroy the beauty of much that the Branchidæ accomplished during the centuries that the work was progressing, for it is stated that several hundred years were spent in adorning the site. The fact that one of the few columns still standing and still bearing its crowning capital is unfluted bears silent testimony to the fact that the temple never was completed. Of the finished columns it is impossible to overstate their grace and lightness or the elegance of the carving on their bases, which apparently were designed to be different one from another. The pillars that remain are of great height and remarkable slenderness. Nineteen drums were employed in building them. The bases, of which many are to be seen lying about, and some in situ, display the most delicate tracery and carving imaginable, some being adorned with round bands of relief, and others divided into facets, making the base dodecagonal instead of round, each panel bearing a different and highly ornate design. Close by we found the remains of a huge stone face, or mask, apparently designed as a portion of the adornment of the cornice and presumably one of the metopes of the temple.

The mass of débris of the great structure has been heaped up for so long that a sort of conical hill rises in the midst of it; and on this has been built a tower from which one may look down on the ground plan so far as it remains. The major part of the ruin, however, is at its eastern end, the front, presumably, where the only standing columns are to be seen, rising gracefully from a terrace which has been carefully uncovered by the explorers. Enough remains to give an idea of the immense size projected for the building, and better still enough to give an idea of the elegance with which the ancients proposed to adorn it, that the Ephesians need not eclipse the Milesians in honoring the twin gods. Of the rows of statues that once lined the road from the sea to the shrine, one is to be seen in the British Museum—a curious sitting colossus of quaintly archaic workmanship, and somewhat suggestive, to my own mind, of an Egyptian influence in the squat modeling of the figure.

As one might expect of a shrine sacred to Apollo, there seems to have been an oracle of some repute here; for Crœsus, who was credulous in the extreme where oracles were concerned, sent hither for advice on various occasions, and dedicated a treasure here that was similar to the great wealth he bestowed upon the shrine at Delphi. Furthermore one Neco, who had been engaged in digging a canal to connect the Nile with the Red Sea,—a prototype of the Suez,—dedicated the clothes he wore during that period to the god at the temple of the Branchidæ. Thus while the site never attained the fame among Grecians that was accorded the Delphian, it nevertheless seems to have inspired a great deal of reverence among the inhabitants of Asia Minor and even of Egypt, which may easily account for the elaborate care the Branchidæ proposed to bestow and did bestow upon it.

Our inspection of the temple and the surrounding town was the source of immense interest upon the part of the infantile population, of which the number is enormous. The entire pit around the excavations was lined three deep with boys and girls, the oldest not over fifteen, who surveyed our party with open-mouthed amazement. They escorted us to the city gates, and a small detachment accompanied us on the way back over the moor to the landing, hauling a protesting bear-cub, whose mother had been shot the week before somewhere in the mountains of Latmos by some modern Nimrod, and whose wails indicated the presence of a capable pair of lungs in his small and furry body. He was taken aboard and became the ship’s pet forthwith, seemingly content with his lot and decidedly partial to sweetmeats.

The walk back over that vast and silent meadow in the twilight was one never to be forgotten. There was something mystical in the deserted plain, in the clumps of bushes taking on strange shapes in the growing dusk, in the great orb of the moon rising over the serrated tops of the distant mountains of the interior—and last, but not least, in the roaring fire which the boatmen had kindled on the rocks to indicate the landing place as the dark drew on. We pushed off, three boatloads of tired but happy voyagers, leaving the fire leaping and crackling on the shore, illuminating with a red glare the rugged rocks, and casting gigantic and awful shadows on the sea.

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